Mosaic

by Gayle Lynds

  She didn't see herself as beautiful or ugly. Like an actor, she thought of her body as an instrument, a tool, and so she dressed it, made it up, and designed it to fit a role. She enjoyed this. For the job as Julia Austrian's companion, she'd made herself look plain and faintly forbidding.

  She opened her suitcase, took out the silencer, and screwed it into the .38. She checked the pistol's clip. Loaded. She replaced the clip, hefted the .38, and instantly found the balance. She gave a dreamy smile.

  She replaced the pistol in its holster. From her suitcase she took a second .38 and checked its clip. Beneath her trousers she wore black leggings as part of her backup costume. She attached a lightweight canvas holster to her leg where it'd be hidden beneath her pants. She snapped the second .38 into the holster.

  Then she dropped the cut ends of two baby-bottle nipples into her jacket pocket.

  Last she took out her skeleton keys. Each was rimmed in rubber to prevent noisy rattling. She slid them into her jacket pocket, too.

  Now she was ready to check on the blind woman. Creighton Redmond wanted to know what was going on in the therapist's office.

  She turned on her heel and trotted through the foyer and out the door to the building's elevator. Beyond the glass doors she saw the doorman in his fancy sky blue livery. Inside the elevator she caressed the button for the fourth floor. With anticipation, she punched it.

  Orion Grapolis's roomy office seemed too small to contain Julia's happiness. She could see. Everything was possible again. But as she soaked up the sight of his kind face, what stood out in her mind was something far more important—her mother's death. Pain seemed to crush her chest. She could see, but her mother was still dead. And it was still her fault. She needed to fly back to London now. She was going to work with Scotland Yard—whether they wanted her to or not. She had the money to get what she wanted, and she'd find some way to buy herself into the police investigation—

  "Where are you going?" Orion Grapolis turned, astounded, as Julia rushed toward the office door.

  "I need to phone the chief superintendent—the man who's handling Mother's murder in London. And then I've got to catch a taxi to Kennedy—"

  Orion chuckled. "So much so soon. Sit down. Sit. Please. You have trusted me so far, please trust me now. Sit, Julia!"

  She frowned. "You don't understand—"

  "Ah, dear Julia, I think I do. You are like the frog on the hot burner. You jump off quickly. But the problem is that now you will avoid all burners, whether they are scorching hot or cool as an autumn day. You must distinguish between what is hot and cold—real and fake, what you can and cannot do."

  Concerned, Julia sank back down into her chair. Orion's eyes gleamed as if he'd just received his favorite birthday gift. He clasped his hands over his large stomach and knitted the fingers contemplatively. He exuded warmth and compassion, and she had a sense there wasn't a dishonest bone in his rotund body. No wonder Edda adored him and the troubled and the lost stood in line to be his patients.

  But she couldn't take time for more talk now. In London she'd kept the news from her mother, denied her the joy of sharing her sight . . . until it was almost too late. And then she'd failed to save her. She had to find her mother's killer.

  She forced her voice to remain calm: "What is it you want to tell me, Orion?"

  "First, it is useless to berate yourself for not saving your mother's life. You could not control whether you could see or not see." He shrugged. "I know, I know. You think you understand Still, we do not have a crystal ball for your future—"

  "Orion!"

  He shook his head. "Please. Indulge me. First, conversion disorder has been around a long time in various forms. There were a great number of cases during World War One, when we called it shell shock. And then in World War Two we called it battle fatigue. In Vietnam and Desert Storm, it could be part of post-traumatic stress syndrome. No matter the name, in all wars a few soldiers lose the use of their legs or eyes or ears, but without the mark of a single physical wound. Yet they can't move, see, hear, or perhaps their 'nerves' are shot to hell and they shake all the time. Some of them recover. A few never do. It is true also in civilian life. People—especially young women—suddenly cannot talk or walk or, as in your case, see. It is well documented—"

  "And?" she urged impatiently.

  "These are forms of your conversion disorder. Once it was called conversion hysteria, but there is such a prejudice and lack of understanding about the word 'hysteria' that the American Psychiatric Association changed it to 'conversion disorder.' In any case, the ailment has been around a long time. In fact, for some two thousand years in India the Ayurvedic have treated it by streaming medicated milk onto the patient's forehead. Here in Western culture, hypnosis has been the treatment of choice since the days of Freud, but even it does not always work."

  "Orion, I'm sorry. What's your point?"

  "The mind is a complex instrument still far too sophisticated for our most advanced scientists and equipment, but we do know certain things. For instance, we know conversion disorder is a psychiatric condition in which aberrant bodily functioning arises from psychological conflict or need."

  "I know that—"

  Then she thought she heard a sound. It was so small it might not exist. It was more like a breath on the back of her neck. Her well-trained ears seemed to hear it. But it was impossible. She didn't turn around to look behind her at the office door that opened into the hallway.

  Orion's heavy face grew grim. He knew that what all sufferers of this disorder had in common was an inability to voice—even consciously remember—some soul-searing despair. "I must warn you I cannot guarantee your vision will last. We can guess it has been returning spontaneously because you are ready to grapple with whatever caused your blindness in the first place. Until you find and face the trauma, which more than likely was considerable and shocking, there is a very real risk that if something reminds you of it again, like your ring, you may relapse and go blind. You may not. However, it is a possibility. A symptom sometimes does return. If it should happen, remember our hypnosis session. I told you that you could do it for yourself, and that is true. I could not let you leave until you understood all this."

  In the crack of the doorway, Maya Stern listened to the doctor's warning, which held no interest for her. Instead her focus was completely on what he'd said earlier: I cannot guarantee your vision will last. The news riveted her.

  The Austrian woman could see again.

  Silently she slipped the skeleton key from the lock and dropped it into her pocket. With sure movements she pulled her Smith & Wesson from the small of her back. She felt her heart rate slow. Excited pleasure flowed through her.

  Orion said, "I will be back in two weeks, and then you must come to see me again. We will continue working together until you discover the trauma that provoked your blindness."

  Julia said, "Thank you, Orion. How can I ever tell you how much what you've done means to me?"

  "That smile is enough." He cocked his head, and his broad face spread in a grin. "It is why I do this work, after all . . ."

  This time Julia was certain. Her ears told her she'd heard something. And there was more. . . there was the faint odor of Norma's perfume. It was almost nonexistent, but she'd smelled the scent often enough in the limousine and in the maisonette that it was etched into her brain stem. She turned, furious that Norma was sneaking around after her. Norma had obviously lost it. Gone mad thinking she had to protect her helpless new charge—

  "Norma!" Julia scolded and stared at the door's crack. She was stunned.

  "Julia? What is it?" Orion asked.

  The face in the crack between the door and jamb was the face of her mother's murderer: The arched eyebrows, the short black hair, the hollow cheeks, and the black granite eyes that quickly narrowed, calculating. Instantly Julia's head exploded with fury, grief, and guilt. Everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours . . . the savage death of her mother
, the loss of her sight, the deep guilt that she was to blame for her mother's death . . . all coalesced into a lightning bolt of furious violence. Her hands wanted to wrap around the woman's throat and squeeze until there was no life. Until the murderer was as dead as her mother.

  Julia yelled, "I'm going to kill you! " She jumped up.

  Then she saw the gun aimed at her through the opening.

  "No!" Julia shouted. "Stop!" She fell to the carpeting behind the big chair. "Orion—!"

  There was a quiet thunk. From the floor she swiftly twisted to look at the psychologist just as the first bullet struck his heart. The second bullet followed immediately, plowing through the blood and ragged tissue of the first wound.

  Orion gasped. It felt as if a truck had slammed into his chest. Pain seared his brain. Blood erupted and poured down his belly. At the same moment, behind Orion another door opened.

  It was Edda Grapolis, Orion's wife. "Julia! Why are you shouting at Orion? It's almost time for you to leave. What's going on? Orion—" Edda saw his slumped body. She saw Julia on the floor, hiding. She screamed.

  For Julia, it was almost as if she'd again witnessed her mother's murder: The surprise on Orion's compassionate face. The pain that torqued his features. The hands that rose in almost a pleading gesture. Then fell against his bloody chest and slid limp into his lap. She knew in some primitive part of her he was dead, too. Anguish jolted her. The cooked, metallic odor of his blood stank the air. Murdered!

  And she'd be next.

  Before another beat passed, she dived across the room and into the Grapolises' apartment. As Edda's screams followed her, Julia raced down the hall toward the back stairs. Oh, my God! She was responsible for Orion's death!

  Fighting every instinct to turn back, to explain, to stay with Edda, to somehow comfort Orion, to fight the killer, she made herself run on.

  All this happened in seconds. As the wife knelt before the dead psychologist and sobbed, Maya Stern paused at the slit of the open door. If she had to kill Austrian, her orders were to make it look like an accident or to at least arrange events to be certain nothing would be traced back to Creighton Redmond.

  If she killed her here, she'd have to kill the other woman, Grapolis's wife. There would be national press coverage. A police investigation. They would need suspects—

  Edda Grapolis stretched her trembling, age-spotted hands out before her as if they were a wizard's wands and could erase the blood and death and bring back her dear Orion. "Julia!" she whispered, then cried out. "What have you done, Julia! Oh, my God!"

  Maya had no doubts she'd be able to track down and kill Julia Austrian. Austrian was an amateur. She'd never run far enough or fast enough. It was only a matter of time. But now she could increase the pressure on Austrian and explain away Orion Grapolis's murder. The dead man's widow had given her the idea—

  Maya quickly wiped her prints from her silenced .38 and slid it across the low-nap carpet. It rocked to a stop beside the chair where Julia Austrian had sat.

  She smiled, closed the door, and pulled her backup pistol from her leg holster. She ran to the end of the hall. She yanked open the fire door, tore down the back stairs, and blasted out into the city's cold, crisp night. She saw Austrian immediately.

  Austrian's light-brown hair flew behind as her feet pumped south on Park Avenue. She was wearing navy slacks and a white blazer, which shone almost like silver neon in the streetlights. She had no transportation. No money or credit cards. No weapons with which to defend herself. Not even coins to make a telephone call.

  Maya smiled again and put on a burst of speed. Austrian was as good as dead.

  PART TWO

  SAM KEELINE

  19

  7:02 PM, SATURDAY

  NEW YORK CITY

  Sam Keeline drove north on Park Avenue, looking for a parking place among the night's shadows. He'd hardly noticed the grand apartment buildings that dotted the exclusive area, or the bundled pedestrians hustling along the sidewalks. He was completely focused on meeting Julia Austrian.

  As he drove toward the red-granite Asia Society building, he thought about the Amber Room, tantalizing himself. There'd been many rumors after the war—

  One was that SS officers had forced Soviet prisoners to hide the Amber Room, and then they'd shot them. Another rumor was that the SS had trucked it through a tunnel all the way from Königsberg to Berlin—completely unbelievable, but an example of aroused imaginations. Others thought the castle curator had hidden the room somewhere outside Königsberg and then fooled the Soviets into thinking it'd been obliterated. And because GIs had sent all manner of loot home, there was the tale that the Germans had stored the room in one of their salt mines at Grasleben or Merkers, where GIs had discovered it and shipped it clandestinely into the States. A final version was that Soviet officers found it and secretly dispatched it to the Kremlin's catacombs, where who knew what had happened to it.

  And then Sam's mind shifted to the amber itself, some hundred square meters of it. He wasn't a religious man, but he said a silent prayer that Julia Austrian had information about the Amber Room. She lived in a building only two blocks away.

  He'd decided if she wouldn't reveal what she knew voluntarily, he'd get it out of her some other way. Obviously she was too rich to bribe. But maybe he could trick her. Or browbeat her. Or there was always the remote possibility she might listen to reason. But he doubted it. The rich were too accustomed to having their own way for logic to be part of their daily lexicon. He was just erasing from his mind all preconceived notions, preparing himself to deal with the roadblocks he expected Julia Austrian to throw up when he almost missed an astounding sight—

  He slowed his car. At first he decided he must be wrong. From what he could see, the woman resembled Julia Austrian—long golden-brown hair, slender body. But she was racing down Park Avenue as if a MIG fighter jet were on her tail, and the way she was dodging obstacles and people told him she had to be able to see exactly where she was going. With long-ago skills, he rapidly took in her face—large eyes, fine nose, haughty profile. Her full pink lips were slightly parted, and her dark brows were raised in perfect arcs of terror and anger. She was madly darting in and out of the street, trying to hail taxis.

  It couldn't be Julia Austrian. She was blind.

  But he remembered reading in his research this morning that she lifted weights and was a regular exerciser at the gyms in the luxury hotels she stayed in around the world. . . . All part of her professional regimen so she'd have the muscles and stamina to give a huge sound to big, difficult works like the Rachmaninoff Third Concerto.

  But who could be chasing her anyway? And why?

  Then he spotted her pursuer—a black-haired woman in a dark-gray pants suit. She almost disappeared into the cityscape, so neutral were her clothes in the shadowy night. But her velocity gave her away. White contrails seemed to streak from her heels as she wove among pedestrians.

  At the speed she was moving, she was going to catch the Austrian woman soon—

  Terror and fury propelled Julia as she tried to escape the woman who'd killed her mother. Killed Orion. Now wanted to kill her. It made her stomach a tight knot. Her temples throbbed with fear.

  Run. Run.

  Faster. Faster.

  And her head pounded with confusion. There was too much to see.

  She'd been blind so long the usual filters that kept other people's brains from exploding were weak from disuse in her.

  Hurry! You've got to move faster!

  Too many street signs. Honking taxis. Harried faces.

  Curbs. Striding feet. Concrete balustrades. Streetlamps. Complaining children. Dogs on leashes out for their evening constitutionals. Angry adults cursing her for bumping into them as she tried frantically to outrun the killer.

  She couldn't stop to catch a taxi. Time to give it up. She didn't have cash anyway.

  Faster! Faster!

  She'd longed for the sighted world. Now she had no time to get us
ed to it.

  There was too much change. It made her head even more chaotic. The differences hadn't hit her in her tradition-clad concert or just a few minutes ago in Orion's office. . . . Orion was dead. As her feet pounded on, she pushed Orion's horrible murder away. She couldn't deal with it now. She had to make her feet keep moving.

  She put on a burst of speed. Her lungs ached. And everywhere she looked she was assaulted by numbing change. It was in the clothes and the strange hair and even a few of the buildings, although in this area of Park Avenue most structures were distinguished only by their boring sameness. It almost made her laugh—stability.

  In a flash, she remembered the last time she'd seen 740 Park—it'd been draped in scaffolding and netting. It was one of Manhattan's most impressive structures, but she recalled clearly how dark and dreary it'd been before the scaffolding went up. Now its charcoal-colored limestone was cleaned to a luminous Victorian gray, and it towered, glowing, where she remembered only murkiness and scaffolds.

  Don't stop. Don't think. Run. Run. Run.

  And she had to get used to it. To everything. Immediately.

  Sweat poured off her. She glanced back over her shoulder. The killer was closing in. Terror hammered through her arteries. She was going to be shot to death.

  Without stopping, Julia tore across to Seventieth Street against the light. Horns honked. Tires shrieked. She careened among the vehicles.

  "Goddamned idiot!" yelled the driver of a pickup.

  "Fuck you, crazy bitch!" someone else bellowed.

  But she'd made it. She throttled east toward Lexington Avenue.

  "Julia Austrian!" A man's voice shouted at her from the street.

  She didn't turn. She concentrated on her feet

  Run. Run. Run. Breathe!

  Her muscles trembled, strained. She was slowing. She wasn't going to make it—